


Bringing It Home

by T Verano (t_verano)



Category: Hawaii Five-0 (2010)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-07
Updated: 2013-12-07
Packaged: 2018-01-03 21:07:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1073059
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/t_verano/pseuds/T%20Verano
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Danny and Steve go hiking.</p>
<p>Set during the middle of the second half of Season 2.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bringing It Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kristen999](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kristen999/gifts).



> This was written for [Kristen999](http://archiveofourown.org/users/kristen999/pseuds/kristen999), who is a treasure to the fandom and a treasure to have as a friend, and who's waited for this auction fic with the patience of a saint for such a very long time. You are such a dear to have bid on this fic, Kristen, and such a dear for not giving up on slow (slow, very slow) me. I hope the fic manages to bring you even a hundredth of the happiness I've gotten from your fics, your posts, and all the fandom joy you share so generously. 
> 
> Heartfelt thanks also from both me and the fic to [esteefee](http://archiveofourown.org/users/esteefee) for her stellar beta. This fic is far, far better because of her insight and her suggestions (and hopefully I didn't mess anything up when I revised it, but if I did? Gentle readers, believe me, that's all on me. Esteefee rocks. (And not just as a beta.:-)).

"See, this, here," Danny gingerly patted the frame of the chair he was sitting on, "is why I hate you, McGarrett. One of the reasons."

The chair wobbled a little in response, making Danny dislike it — especially its painfully warped wooden seat — even more. The floor of their cozy little finders-keepers shack was starting to look more appealing as a place to park his butt despite the dirt and the insects and other unmentionables undoubtedly hanging out at floor level. It wasn't like the cot Steve was lying on wasn't low enough for Danny to keep an eye on him from down there as easily as from up here.

One corner of Steve's mouth quirked up a little. "You love me." Steve mumbled the words, almost swallowing them. His right hand hefted itself up a full three or four inches from where was lying on the mildew-spotted mattress, made a sorry stab at pointing in Danny's general direction, and then flopped back down in an untidy heap of vaguely twitching fingers.

Danny couldn't take his eyes off those pathetic fingers. Yeah, okay, so he didn't really hate Steve. Most of the time he didn't. But he hated this. 

Steve was being so goddamned _Steve._ The lunatic never went at anything a mere 110 percent; he had to throttle the fuck down to keep himself to a superhuman 150 percent. There had been times Danny had actually been impressed by that, not that he planned to tell Steve; times he'd even been grateful for it.

Not today, though. He ran his hands through his still-damp hair. Again. "Could you just once try to cut back on the overachieving, babe?" he said, and it came out more plaintive than sarcastic. Danny was past caring about his tone, though. Not when Steve was so fucking _sick._

Steve's eyes were glassy, and he blinked at Danny slowly before his eyelids settled at half-mast. Those stupidly long eyelashes were spiky with sweat, which was a bad sign. It would be worse if they weren't, though; at least Steve wasn't dehydrated enough to have stopped sweating. Yet.

"'You talking about?" Steve said in another mumble, his temporary lucidity fading with every syllable. The question died into a sigh, and he closed his eyes.

Danny heaved a sigh himself. "You, jackass. I'm talking about you," he muttered as he checked the watch on Steve's wrist again. Still way too many hours until dawn. Of course, dawn wouldn't help matters much if it didn't stop raining, since they needed a signal fire with lots of visible smoke to have any real hope of attracting attention, of attracting the help Steve needed. 

Steve didn't react. He just lay there, sick as a dog, the heat radiating off him so intense Danny kept imagining he could see the air shimmering off Steve's body.

Goddammit. He was never letting Steve talk him into anything again.

Ever.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Hiking," Danny had said. Carefully. _"Hiking."_

Steve's face morphed into You Can't Be Serious — disbelief and amusement with a double scoop of Grow A Pair, Why Don't You piled on top for good measure. The smug bastard. 

"That was a fluke, Danny. We're not going to find another homicide victim's body off the side of a cliff."

"That is correct," Danny said, "because we — as in you and I — are not _going_ hiking. No hiking? No DB. See how that works?"

"You're just chicken."

Danny huffed a little, righteously. "I know what you're doing here, and it won't work. Listen, you want to hike to the top of the Empire State Building, I am there for you. You want to spend the day hiking around Central Park, I am — again — there for you. But," he stabbed a reproving finger at Steve's ridiculous chest, "you want somebody to keep you company on another hike in these godforsaken, jungle-covered Hawaiian death-traps masquerading as mountains? Take Grace's dog along."

'Never give up, never surrender' had to be the McGarrett family motto. "Fresh air," Steve said, unfazed. "Exercise. It's beautiful up there, Danny. Even you have to admit that."

"No, see, you're wrong there. I don't have to admit anything," Danny answered. It had been pretty spectacular, sure — right up until they'd found a body, and Steve had managed to nearly get himself crushed by a boulder. That kind of corpse-embellished scenery Danny could live without.

"Come on, man. You'll love it. You can de-stress. Most people hike the other end of the park; there probably won't be anybody around for miles." 

_Never give up,_ for fuck's sake.

Time to get tough. Danny cleared his throat. "You say that like it's a good thing, being alone with you; just me and you and a sauna disguised as a jungle, and mud and mountains and giant mutant insects, and…and you. There's something wrong with you if you think I wouldn't find every item on that list stressful in the first place, McGarrett."

Steve stood stock-still in the doorway of Danny's office for a moment, his face gone blank. Then he nodded his head, sort of bobbed it up and down a few times, clamping his lips together. It made Danny think of the creepy little head-bobbing lizards he'd seen way too often since he'd moved here,

"Okay," Steve said. His head bobbed a couple more times. "Okay. You're happier spending your day off hanging out with a remote and a bag of Doritos than with me. I get that. You have fun, now." 

The jerk. Danny glared at him. "Why do you always have to do that?"

"Do what?" Steve's lips had turned down a little at the corners. Artfully. The jerk.

"Try to manipulate me like that."

"Manipulate? Whoa." Steve was frowning openly now. An annoying line ran across the middle of his forehead when he was being more intense than usual; it was a line that drove Danny crazy, and it was out in full force. "You were the one who said spending the day with me would be," he hooked his fingers into air-quotes, " _stressful,_ so I fail to see how anything I said after that could be considered —"

"You know what? _Fine,_ " Danny said. "What time are you picking me up tomorrow?" That line on Steve’s forehead made his fingers itch. Itch to do _what_ varied — pat Steve on the arm, haul him off to the nearest ER to forestall the aneurysm that was clearly incipient, punch him in the face. Sometimes all of those things simultaneously.

"Really?" 

Danny scrubbed a hand over his face with a sigh. Steve’s stupid frown line got to him every time. "Really. What time? And do not answer me with any hour that arrives _before noon,_ or I will hurt you."

Steve's frown gave way to a shit-eating grin. Any latent urge Danny may or may not have been feeling to pat him on the arm vanished. "Oh five hundred, Danno. We should be at the trailhead at first light. The spot I want to show you is a good four-hour hike."

"Oh five hun-…. a _four-hour_ —"

Danny sucked in a deep breath and counted to ten. Okay, to three and a half. "I am trading you in for a case of Spam, then giving it to Kamekona to have for breakfast," he said with venom.

Steve, the fucker, was already back in his own office with the door closed. 

With his grin wider than ever.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Most of the drive had been in the dark, but by the time Steve parked the truck at the trailhead the sun was coming up like it was whizzing in on rollerblades.

"That's another thing I hate," Danny said, waving a hand towards the east. He'd worked up a respectable list of complaints on the drive out here, no reason to stop adding to it now. Saturday mornings weren't meant for shit like this.

Steve was hefting his I Am A Freaking SEAL, I'm Required To Carry The World On My Shoulders backpack out of the truck. It made a preposterously heavy-sounding thud as he put it on the ground. "What, the sun? Morning? Clean air? You have no soul, Danny."

Danny flipped Steve off before he picked up his own small, sensible, I Don't Need To Prove My Masculinity pack. "In Jersey you got nice, lingering twilights and dawns. You can take your time with things. Here, boom, the sun's up or the sun's down."

"That's because —"

"Latitude, Mr. Science, I know that. Do not talk latitude to me."

"Well, I'm definitely not talking longitude with you."

"That's because you'd lose."

"I never lose, Danno."

"You keep telling yourself that if it makes you happy."

Steve grinned. The fluffy clouds that were still hanging around the rapidly rising sun were a garish pink and Steve's face was flushed under the reflected light.

A pink SEAL. It was sort of cute, in an almost alarming kind of way.

"Come on, we need to get moving." Steve clapped Danny on the shoulder and took off up the trail without waiting.

Danny sighed. "I was having a moment here," he called after Steve. "Do you mind?"

"A moment about what?" Steve called back. He sounded skeptical.

Okay, Danny didn't actually _know._ "It was a figure of speech," he answered grumpily, and started after Steve and his ridiculous backpack with another sigh.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Not that I'm complaining — trust me, I'm not complaining — but why are we stopping?"

"Water break," Steve said, easing his backpack off and pulling a pair of bottles from its cavernous depths.

They'd been hiking up — mostly up, but there'd been various stretches of down involved, too — on a single-file trail through the jungle for a while now, and Danny wiped the sweat off his forehead before he took one of the bottles from Steve.

Steve didn't just need to wipe off a little sweat, he looked like he needed a towel. Or three.

"Hey, you run ahead to the waterfall and teleport back when I wasn't paying attention? You look like you jumped in."

"Huh? No," Steve answered. "I don't think so. It's just warm."

"We're hiking through a tropical hellhole, of course it's warm." It wasn't really that bad, though. "What the fuck are you carrying in that pack? You realize you're not on active duty, right? You don't have to haul three hundred pounds of crap around on your back."

Steve shrugged. "More water, sat phone, first aid kit. Emergency supplies. Lunch. Climbing gear —"

"Whoa, wait. You are not climbing up or down anything, you understand? You start to rappel down a cliff and I'll push a boulder down on top of you myself." Steve rolled his eyes at that and Danny glared at him, putting some oomph into the glare before softening it a little. "But the sat phone, you have my full approval there. Especially since I left my cell at home, thank you, having been forced out of bed in the middle of the night by a crazy person and chivvied out the door before I was even halfway awake." He pointed an accusing finger at Steve. "Saturdays should never begin while it's still pitch dark outside."

Steve rolled his eyes again but at least he didn’t launch into an automatic ode to the physical, moral, and tactical virtues of pre-dawn weekend 'relaxation.' Danny chugged some water and looked idly around at the current scenery.

Leave it to Steve to find them the jungliest-looking jungle to trek through that Danny had yet come across anywhere in the islands. The relentlessly green plant life was jammed together tighter than skyscrapers in Manhattan, crowding the trail with vines and trees and shrubs all shoulder to shoulder and elbow to knee, and the trail itself? The trail was almost a joke, barely there in some places. Danny kept expecting Steve to pull a monster machete out of his monster backpack and start whacking away. This so-called trail clearly didn't attract much in the way of crowds. Maybe it only attracted sadistic SEALs and their masochistically softhearted and softheaded partners.

Speaking of which… Danny glanced at Steve, expecting to see him in full-on smug mode, having conned Danny into this. What he didn't expect to see was Steve staring blankly at nothing, as far as Danny could tell, his bottle of water still unopened and his breathing sounding almost a little ragged, at least for Steve at mere 'hike' exertion level. It was a little spooky.

Danny nudged Steve's arm. "Drink your water."

Steve ignored him.

Danny nudged him again, exasperated, and Steve's eyes fell from the tree or vine or whatever he'd been staring at and settled on the bottle of water in his hand. And stayed there, like Steve had never seen a bottle of Hawaiian Springs before and wasn't sure what to do with it.

Spooky. "Steve? You okay?"

Steve sort of shook himself a little and made a face — not one Danny had a name for, or even an interpretation for — and shrugged. "Yeah, sure. We should get moving." He twisted the cap off his water bottle and drank half of the bottle in one long go, then upended the rest of the water over the top of his head like his own private miniature tropical monsoon, plastering his hair to his skull and washing the sweat off his face in runnels of bottled water.

Danny snorted. "I wish I could say this should teach you not to haul three hundred pounds of crap around in your backpack when we're just going on a day hike, but sadly, I know it won't. Still, you got any rocks in there, you ought to dump them. Aside from the ones in your head, I mean. Those, you probably need, gotta have something to think with."

The huff Steve gave at that was predictable and worth the equally predictable Eat My Dust, Sucker pace Steve set heading up along the trail again. Danny grinned at the affronted set to the back of Steve's head as he followed; it was much more entertaining than the relentless green shit growing everywhere around them.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny dumped his backpack on the ground and stretched his shoulders. "So when is this famous waterfall supposed to show up, anyway?"

"It's not famous, Danny; that's part of the point. It's just peaceful." Steve settled his backpack on the ground not far from Danny's and retrieved more water for them both. "And beautiful." After he handed Danny one of the bottles, he sat down, leaning against his backpack like it was the back of an armchair. "Another hour and you can see for yourself." 

"Oh, joy," Danny muttered as he started hunting around for a good spot to sit, and Steve smirked.

Danny's sensibly sized daypack wasn't exactly chair-back caliber like Steve's, but he did find a tree to park himself under that had nice smooth bark to lean against and no annoying roots poking at his ass, and as far as improvised jungle patio furniture went, it wasn't bad. He drank some water and savored the breeze; it was a little cooler here now that they were higher up. The small stretch of open ridge they were on was surrounded on three sides by the same blur of trees and vines and ferns and bushy crap they'd been hiking through for hours, but the view from the ridge was…well, pretty nice.

Okay, it was impressive. Danny kicked himself mentally for forgetting his phone; he wanted to share this view with Grace. "Hey," he said, "toss your phone over here, I want to take a picture. Not that I'm admitting you were right or anything, but it's actually kind of… Hey, Steve? Steve!"

Would you look at that. Steve McGarrett, Mr. Tough Guy himself, was asleep. Three measly hours of hiking, and the big bad SEAL was down for the count.

Now Danny _really_ wished he had his phone. He needed a picture of this, evidence that Steve was actually human.

Grinning, he studied Steve's face. The grin didn’t last long, though: not only was Steve showing signs of actually being human, but he _looked_ tired, even asleep, and the frown line Danny hated was back, running straight across Steve's forehead in a deep furrow.

With an effort, Danny controlled his automatic urge to do something, anything, about that stupid line. Steve was probably just dreaming about being forced to follow due process or about how long it'd been since he'd thrown somebody in a shark cage, nothing worse.

And if Steve was this tired — he'd had a hell of a year so far, and Danny could hardly blame him for being tired — he should just sleep already for a while. The waterfall wasn't going anywhere.

Steve shifted a little, because God forbid he not be restless even while he was sleeping, he fucking never _stopped,_ and the frown line smoothed itself away like it had never existed.

Good. That probably meant Steve was back to dreaming about wreaking havoc with heavy artillery and with zero regard for the slime-ball of the day's Miranda rights or his own basic safety, but it was Saturday, and the frown line was gone, and Steve was _napping._ Danny could be generous.

The breeze tugged at Danny’s hair, and he pulled his gaze away from Steve’s now-relaxed face to look back out over the green folds falling away below the edge of the ridge. From here, everything he could see looked like untouched wilderness. Prehistoric untouched wilderness — squint a little, and it was easy to imagine the head of a brontosaurus poking up out of that clump of trees off to the right, or a pterodactyl banking in just underneath that fluffy white cloud on the left there. Fortunately, it was equally easy to imagine Steve having anti-Tyrannosaurus rex missiles complete with a ground launcher in his preposterous backpack.

It really was peaceful here, though, in spite of the in your face Jurassic Park-ness of it all. More fluffy white clouds drifted across the ludicrously blue sky and the almost-cool breeze tugged at Danny's hair some more, but gently this time.

Yeah, really peaceful, this place.

Danny yawned.

Really, really peaceful. 

Really, really…

An insect buzzed near his ear and Danny grumbled under his breath and waved it off, not bothering to open his eyes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Something buzzy — something flying and buzzy, and clearly plotting the most effective approach in order to achieve a solid, painfully itchy bite — circled Danny's head persistently, and Danny groaned. That was the trouble with napping outside, especially napping outside in a jungle; there were too many bugs ready and willing to kill the mood, and the nap, at their vicious little whims.

He levered his eyes open and sighed. A longer nap would've been appreciated, considering how early Steve had yanked him out of bed this morning, but…

Okay, maybe it hadn't been such a short nap after all. There hadn't been that many clouds in the sky when he fell asleep, he was sure of that. And it _felt_ later, how much later he had no idea, he needed to check with Steve and his over-compensating, baseball-sized wristwatch. Steve was the one who —

Huh. Steve. Why hadn't he woken Danny up? He couldn't still be asleep. It had to have been at least an hour, maybe more. Steve really didn't do naps, certainly not hour-long naps, and not when they had a motherfucking _goal_ handy for them to kill themselves achieving. He couldn’t still be asleep.

"Steve," Danny started, turning towards Steve’s Nap HQ, and broke off.

He was right, Steve _wasn't_ still napping.

Steve wasn't, in actual fact, even there anymore.

Anywhere.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Steve! Goddammit, _McGarrett!"_ Danny paused for a moment, listening.

Nothing. Just birds and insects, not even the sound of leaves rustling from the breeze, not here on this tunnel-like section of the trail.

Danny swallowed, his mouth dry and his throat starting to ache from yelling Steve's name.

He was never the fuck ever going hiking with McGarrett again. Just, he needed to _find_ Steve, to tell him that, right before he decked him and left him lying on the ground to commune with his beloved Hawaiian wilderness while Danny made tracks back to the parking area and took off in Steve's truck. Or, better yet, while he grabbed Steve's phone and got himself airlifted directly back to Honolulu, where there was cold beer and bad pizza and a sofa to sack out on with his feet propped up, and the TV to provide a nice background hum that wasn't even vaguely reminiscent of insects.

Jesus. If only he had his cell phone to call for help; the sat phone and Steve's cell could both be traced by GPS signals. Or if not, Chin — Chin was good at shit like this, if he was here he could go all Ninja Tracker and track down Steve’s stupid lost ass. Danny sure as fuck wasn't getting anywhere himself. He'd circled as far as he dared around the open part of the ridge where they'd been napping, gritting his teeth at his city-boy limitations, knowing that if he went too far he might not find his way back, even with the markers he left for himself. Then he'd gone farther up the trail, finding nothing, then gone back down the way they'd come, finding nothing in that direction either, no sight or sound of Steve or even his idiotic six-foot-tall backpack, and Jesus fucking H. Christ, what _was_ it about Steve and hiking?

This vanishing-act thing was scaring the crap out of Danny, since the only thing that made sense, even if it didn't make sense, was that some fucker had gotten the drop on a sleeping Steve, then silently hustled him — and his backpack, for some reason — away at gunpoint.

Why anybody would do that, take Steve hostage and leave Danny unharmed, asleep, wasn’t something Danny really wanted to think about.

He also didn’t want to think about the obvious fact that Steve clearly hadn't yet managed to disarm the son of a bitch and leave him zip-tied to an anthill or hanging upside down from a banana bush or something. The shoe should've been on the other foot long before this; it should've been Steve tracking Danny down, not the other way around. Not that Danny was _succeeding_ in tracking Steve down. Goddammit.

"Steve!" Danny yelled again. It wasn't like he could sneak up on Steve's kidnapper when he couldn't even figure out which direction the asshole had taken Steve in, after all.

Of course, it wasn't like yelling was actually helping, either, unless somewhere out there Steve had finally pulled off some fancy SEAL move and turned the tables on Kidnapper Asshole and was now frog-marching the kidnapper-turned-prisoner toward the sound of Danny's voice.

Jesus, please just let him be marching himself, with or without the kidnapper-turned-prisoner, toward Danny. 

"McGarrett!" Danny closed his eyes and listened again. 

Nothing. 

_"Steve!"_

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny mopped sweat off his forehead and resisted the urge to punch the nearest tree trunk.

He could've been at home. All day. Doing nothing more stressful than channel surfing and deciding which frozen dinner to pop in the microwave when he got hungry. Instead he was hiking uselessly up and down the same stretch of this fucking mountain jungle trail, covering the same territory over and over, trying to spot something, anything, yelling McGarrett's name until his throat was raw.

Wasn't there something about the definition of a crazy person being somebody who kept doing the same thing over and over again while expecting the results to change? That would put Danny square in line for crazy.

Right up there with Steve. Whose brand of crazy was a hell of a lot different — a hell of a lot more lethal — but possibly not a hell of lot more stupid than Danny's current crazy. Because yes, logically, Danny should've spent the past couple of hours hightailing it back down the trail to civilization to enlist help, instead of this dumbass back and forth, up and down circling.

The thing was, every time he told himself that the best way to help Steve was to haul ass back to the trailhead and rope in Chin or a Forest Service tracker or a pack of bloodhounds, his gut froze up like he was about to make a horrible mistake, and you don't survive long as a cop, especially a Jersey cop — or as part of Five-Oh — if you don't listen to your gut.

He clenched his hand into a fist and pounded it against his thigh. Fuck. He was nearly at the top of his loop of the trail, and it would take at least a couple of hours to get down to the trailhead from here since the footing on the trail wasn't going to give him much opportunity to hit even jogging speed. Which meant he needed to start back down now, so there'd still be enough daylight left for searching-type people to actually _search_ for Steve.

To find him.

To find him alive and okay.

Danny's gut froze up again. He wasn't sure if it was the thought — the likelihood, at this point — that Steve might not be okay, or if it was another one of his "leave now and you'll be making a terrible mistake" hunches.

He looked up the trail, at the claustrophobic tangle of uninformative greenery, and chewed his lip. Fuck it all. Fifteen more minutes. One more shot to the top of his search loop, maybe a little further this time, then he'd head down.

In time to get Steve help.

It would be in time. He would be in time. He _would_ be. He had to be.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The new, higher-up stretch of trail looped and dipped and climbed and looked even more discouraging than the sections Danny had grown so familiar with. Everything was tightly hemmed in by trees that were trying to be vines or vines that were trying to be trees — Danny couldn't decide which it was — and away from the trail itself the ground rose and fell in small but sharp ridges that cut down the already for-crap visibility even more. If he went off-trail here he'd get lost within five minutes. Or less.

"Come on, you asshole. Come _on,_ " Danny muttered. He raised his voice to the loudest shout he could still manage. "I am never going hiking with you again, McGarrett, you hear me? Steve? _Steven?"_

"…Danno?"

Holy fuck. Holy _fuck._

Danny felt himself grinning like a lunatic. Steve's voice sounded almost as rough as Danny's did, but he was fucking _alive._ And nearby.

And from the direction his voice had come from, farther ahead and to Danny's left — off the trail, but that didn't matter now. Steve could get them back on the trail. And he had the sat phone, anyway.

Suddenly Danny’s raw throat — and his gut — felt a hell of a lot better. "Hey, Steve," he shouted, and this time shouting didn't hurt his throat at all, "I'm coming. Just keep yelling, I'll find you."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny fought his way through the uncooperative vegetation, shouting for Steve to yell at him again every few minutes, and doing his Jersey best to turn Steve’s voice into a compass.

He was maybe a little worried again now.

Maybe. Just a little.

Steve wasn’t being Steve, _again._ He was apparently staying put, for one thing. And that meant he was either too injured to walk — and when the ever-loving fuck was Steve McGarrett ever too injured to do anything? — or he had whoever had kidnapped him tied up and didn’t want to leave them even for a couple of minutes. Which also wasn’t like Steve; Danny figured he would’ve used the rope from his backpack, or hell, woven some rope from jungle vines and palm fronds, then tied the guy up like a trussed turkey and headed in Danny’s direction as soon as he heard Danny’s voice.

Worse, Steve wasn't answering questions. Not even basic crap like, "Are you hurt, you dumbass?" He didn't even answer every time Danny yelled at him, but there were just enough ragged-sounded "Danny"s to keep Danny heading in what he was pretty sure was the right direction.

He bullied his way through a particularly dense curtain of leafy viney shit and yeah, it _was_ the right direction, thank fuck, because there — _there,_ finally, crouched beside his monster backpack on the far side of a small clearing — was his missing SEAL.

Steve didn't look hurt at first glance, although you never could tell with the stupid bastard. He didn’t turn toward Danny, even though he had to know that Danny was there; instead, he kept staring into the depths of the shrubby-looking plants he was crouched beside, radiating tension like an over-juiced high-voltage power line.

There was zero sign of Danny's suddenly-merely-hypothetical kidnapper, unless he was hidden in the shrubs Steve was staring at. That didn’t seem too likely, since there was nothing visible beyond the shrubs except sky, and in this terrain, that meant a cliff edge and nowhere for anybody to go but straight down.

"Steve," Danny said — okay, _demanded_ — as he started across the clearing, "what the hell’s going on?"

Steve ignored him, and Danny all but snarled at him, "McGarrett, I swear to God — "

That was as far as he got. A gust of wind, much stronger here than on the Ridge of Bad Idea Naps, shook the branches of the trees on Danny’s side of the clearing and a rotten branch snapped with a sharp crack. 

"Get down!" At least the wind had gotten Steve’s attention, even if Danny hadn’t been able to — the lunatic was launching himself toward Danny like Danny was standing frozen in a hail of machine-gun fire. Steve’s guided-missile launch lacked its usual fluidity, and he knocked his monster backpack into the shrubbery, where it disappeared from the peripheral vision that was all Danny had to spare for it at the moment. Danny wanted to wring Steve's neck. If he — or Danny, and hell no to _that_ — had to climb halfway down a cliff to retrieve that fucker, Danny was going to — 

Okay, yeah, first he’d better try to keep from getting flattened. 

He lunged to the side just in time to avoid a hundred and eighty pounds of tattooed muscle colliding with his torso and yelled, "Stop! Steve, stop, it was just a tree branch, what is _wrong_ with you?"

Somehow Steve managed to switch from ‘airborne missile’ to ‘tray table placed in its upright and locked position’ a yard away from Danny, and Danny heaved a sigh of relief.

"A tree…? What? What are you…?" Steve shook his head like there were flies buzzing around it. "It was… no. I don’t know." He was gulping air, which was ridiculous for a four-yard journey, no matter how ballistic in nature, and he looked like nothing was making sense to him at the moment. Danny was on board with him on that one.

Steve rubbed his forehead. "Nothing’s wrong with me," he said.

Danny wasn’t as on board with him there. "You know what, I’m going to have to disagree with you about that. You look like crap." He did look like crap. "What the fuck happened? I figured you’d been kidnapped, for Christ’s sake."

Steve rubbed his forehead again. "Nothing. I don’t... Kidnapped? Jesus, Danny."

"What else was I supposed to think? I take a peaceful little snooze, a snooze which you were also taking, by the way, and wake up to find you and your ridiculous backpack gone? No Post-it note stuck to my nose, no breadcrumb trail? You tell me what I was supposed to think."

"I…" Steve stopped, wavering like the ground had suddenly gotten unsteady under his feet, and for a moment Danny thought he was actually going down. He made a grab at Steve's arm but Steve fended him off, Steve-ishly. "I’m _fine,_ " he said, and that was classic McGarrett petulance right there; it made Danny’s blood boil just a little. "I’m fine. I don't remember what… I just…" He was still rubbing his forehead. "I guess I didn’t have any Post-it notes."

Danny looked at him sharply. "That’s what you’re going with? Because I've got to tell you, that answer does not cut it. I’ve been looking for you for hours, you jackass, during which time it never crossed my mind that you’d just decided to go, what, walkabout? And hadn’t remembered to bring along any paper so you could fucking leave me a note, something on the order of ‘Hey, I’ve completely flipped out and I’m just going to wander around the mountains for the next couple of hours on my own, and oh, forget that whole oh-five-hundred waterfall line of crap I fed you, you just stroll on back to Honolulu and enjoy what’s left of your weekend, catch you Monday’?"

Steve didn't seem to have an answer, and Danny winced as he looked at him more closely. Glassy eyes, sweating like he was in a sauna, skin way too pale except for a flush high on his cheekbones… 

Outstanding. Danny stepped in and got his palm flat on Steve's forehead before Steve could jerk away. Yeah, the stupid son of a bitch was burning up. Just outstanding.

"You, my friend," Danny said, as Steve lurched away with a glare, "are sick. And I mean that in the literal, physical sense for a change, this is not a comment on your frequently unbalanced professional behavior. I just hope your backpack is still in reach and we can get you out of here the easy way. I really do not want to cart your pathetic ass all the way back down to the trailhead when you're _non compos mentis._ "

" 'm not sick, Danny," Steve muttered and moved further away from Danny, wobbling slightly as he did so.

"That was convincing." Danny rubbed the back of his neck and scowled at Steve. "Okay, look, you stay put for a minute while I check on your backpack. _Please_ stay put. I'm not chasing you down again. And sit down before you fall down."

Steve focused on him with obvious difficulty. "Stay put. Yeah, I can do that."

Danny glared at him, but he was just standing there, listing a little to one side as if he no longer had the energy — or the balance — to stand up straight. He looked like shit, but at least he looked like shit that had no immediate fever-driven escape plans on deck, so Danny reluctantly took his eyes off him and headed toward the backpack's last known whereabouts. Cautiously, because as he got a better view of the bushes the pack had disappeared into, it was pretty clear that yes, those bushes were clinging to the edge of a dramatically steep _down._

And it was further clear, as he carefully pulled a couple of branches out of the way so he could get a better view of the _down,_ that the backpack, with all its very important contents, was out of the picture. Not entirely literally, Danny could see what looked like a corner of it sticking out from behind a big rock way — way — down there, but nobody without climbing gear and an unhealthy addiction to feats of death-defying stupidity would have a hope of reaching it. 

Perfect. Now he was going to have to shepherd a sick and not really with-it SEAL back down several hours' worth of trail. Fuck Danny's life.

Also? Fuck the Aloha State, which had materialized a bunch of big-ass gray clouds out of nowhere and was apparently about to turn the faucet wide open and attempt to drown him and Steve both on dry land, if the size of the raindrops that were beginning to fall meant anything. He squinted against the heavy drops and turned back toward Steve.

Who once again wasn't there. God damn him. 

This time, at least, Steve hadn't gotten completely out of sight yet. "I'm getting you a leash," Danny yelled into the rain, taking off at a run as the back of Steve's already rain-soaked head disappeared into a curtain of vegetation.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

"Jesus, McGarrett," Danny said, the words coming out between panted breaths. "You should be locked up somewhere, you realize that? Normal sick people do not act like this." His face was stinging from both the force of the raindrops and from the drenched slap of leaves and small branches he’d had to push his way through as he tried to catch up to Steve.

At least he’d succeeded. Finally. Danny wouldn't put it past the Navy to inject all the eager-beaver SEALS-in-training with a nasty flu virus before timing them running obstacle-course drills; it would certainly explain how Steve could move so fast with a fever this high.

Steve was more winded than Danny, which seemed only fair. He was also wild-eyed and not paying any attention to the hand Danny had clamped around his wrist. Instead, he pulled Danny even closer. "We need to be at the exfil site in ten," he said into Danny's ear, intensely quiet, like they were surrounded by unfriendlies. "Take Carter and go high, clean up any stragglers. I'll take the low road and mop up here."

Danny tightened his grip and tried to ignore the already large and still rapidly growing knot of worry in his stomach. "Yeah, I don't think so. I'm not letting you get away from me again."

Steve’s eyes flashed — oh, you do _not_ fuck with Commander McGarrett — and Danny winced. If keeping Steve calm until they could get help depended on him having passable military impersonation skills, they were screwed. He cleared his throat. "Look, you’re not wherever you think you are right now. You’re in Hawaii, we were hiking to your waterfall, remember? Although I think the waterfall decided to come and find _us,_ the way it’s raining. I am not fond of rain, by the way, in case I've neglected to tell you that before."

Steve's glare shifted to a look of befuddlement, and the intensity drained out of him in a rush. "Danny?" he said uncertainly, sagging back to lean against a tree. "I’m… I’m…"

"Sick is what you are. A little bit disoriented." The frown line made itself at home again on Steve’s forehead, and Danny made himself take a deep breath. "We just need to get you back to civilization. You wouldn’t by any chance have stuck the sat phone in one of your pockets before you murdered your backpack?"

"Murdered my backpack?" Steve mustered a half-hearted grin from somewhere, along with some apparent mental clarity. "Are you sure it isn’t you who’s disoriented?"

"You, enough with the cute stuff. Sat phone, pockets?"

Danny really didn't need Steve's headshake to know it wasn't there; every stitch of clothing Steve had on was plastered to his skin from the downpour, and the bulk of the sat phone and its distinctive shape would've been hard to miss.

"What about your cell?"

Steve looked at him blankly. Fuck, that spell of clarity hadn't lasted long. That couldn't be a good sign. He was also beginning to shiver; if he didn't have his tree to lean against, Danny was pretty sure he wouldn't still be standing, which also was not a good sign. Very much not a good sign.

"Steve, your cell? Check your pockets, all right? We need to try to call in the cavalry."

The only thing that question achieved was Steve closing his eyes and leaning his head back against the trunk of the tree, his free hand coming up to rub hard at his forehead.

They didn’t have time for this. The afternoon was closing down on them, and they needed help _now._ Steve was way too fucking sick for them to dick around up here; he needed doctors and medicine, and —

And Danny was going to have to check Steve's pockets — all of his pockets — himself. "I hate you for this, Steven." he said. "You should know that I will hate you for this for the rest of our lives." So what, if the scowl he accompanied that with was less about Steve's pockets and more about how high Steve's fever had to be, for him to be so out it; Steve didn't need to know that. 

The shirt was easy; patting down the pocket there revealed it was empty. The wife-beater Steve had on underneath it was even easier, being pocket-free. The cargo pants…

"Nah, you love me, Danno," Steve muttered just as Danny started patting him down — right-hand front pants pocket, didn't really feel like Steve's cell phone, but there was _something…_ Perfect, Danny was going to have to check that pocket the hard way, and with Steve's pants so fucking wet, working his hand into the pocket was going to be —

Steve's words registered just as Danny started to try to wriggle his hand into the wet and uncooperative pocket, and Danny froze. "At this moment?" he said, and yeah, his voice sounded a little strangled, whose wouldn't? "Not so you'd notice. I do, however, need to find out what you have in your… uh, what useful communication devices you might have squirreled away in your pockets, so you're just going to stand there and think of England. While you're at it, you might as well let the truth start to sink in that I will never let you live this down. Ever."

The grin Steve gave Danny was tired and only at half-mast, but it was unrepentant and pure Steve. Danny's heart gave an odd little lurch. How the fuck he'd ended up with this head-case as a partner… 

Then Steve started trying to _help,_ but his fumbling hands were the opposite of helpful, and Danny batted them away. "Cell phone," Steve mumbled. "I was. I think I was trying to call you. There was a stream? I was sitting on some rocks."

"Call _me?_ That makes total sense." Danny rolled his eyes and kept working his way — very carefully — through Steve's pockets. Even when he made it to the pockets that weren't anywhere near Steve's junk, he kept up the caution; Steve might have IED's in there for all Danny knew. "I left my phone at home. I told you that."

"You…? Yeah, you did." Steve sighed. "I don't think I remembered." Danny snorted at that, and didn't bother to look up to catch the exasperated lip curl that he knew Steve was now sporting. After a couple of moments Steve went on. "Maybe I left the phone there."

"Yeah, well, it's not in your pockets." Danny looked at his haul: Steve's wallet, his badge, sunglasses, a Swiss Army-type knife and a second knife, one that was most definitely not a Swiss Army-type knife, a waterproof box of matches, a signal mirror, a bandana. Not to mention his SIG P226, in a waterproof LokSak, and hey, why was Danny not surprised Steve had brought his SIG along on their peaceful, relaxing hike?

Add Steve's crap to the contents of Danny's backpack and pockets — which were mostly snack-based and extra-bottles-of-water-based, since he _knew_ Steve, had known that Steve would bring along enough survival gear for a dozen people — and they had… yeah, not much. Nothing that was going to help right now.

Fuck. That meant they needed to get back to the trail and at least make a start on heading down while it was still daylight — except that after rain like this, the trail would be a nightmare of slippery mud and hard as hell to make your way down, even if you weren't too sick to stay upright on your own, shaking like a palm frond in a trade wind, and prone to losing track of reality in a disturbingly physical way. Danny wanted to pound his head against the nearest tree trunk. 

First things first. Unless they wanted to spend the night up here, and Danny really, really did not, they needed to get a move on. The problem with that — one of the problems, anyway — was that he didn't have a clue how to get back to the trail. He could handle keeping them headed in a general 'down' direction, sure, but the odds of them ending up anywhere useful any time soon were crap. Steve’s fever had done an awesome job of stranding them in the middle of nowhere, as far as Danny could tell. He scanned the surroundings again, squinting through the rain. Was that…?

Okay, there was _something_ there. It was nearly overgrown by grass and vines and didn’t look like much, just a narrow trace of ground that seemed to be a little muddier than the surrounding ground, a faint line of brown wending its way through the trees and bushes off to the left. Hikers would’ve left a bigger trail, surely? Which meant it was probably a game trail of some sort, and Danny really wasn’t in the mood to encounter any wildlife of the sort large enough to create visible game trails.

Maybe Steve still had some wilderness ninja left in him. Danny could only hope. "Steve, hey," he said, "you think you can get us back on the trail from here? Or another way down? Point me in the right direction, at least?"

"'m cold, Danny."

Danny swallowed. "Yeah, you are. Also too hot. Which we need to do something about, so can you put on your Wilderness Survival Ninja thinking cap and point us in the right direction to get back to some kind of trail?"

"Snow drift," Steve said.

"Okay, _what?"_

"Need a snow drift. Build a snow cave. Shelter."

The knot of worry in Danny's gut tightened. "Right. Why didn't I think of that," he said. Game trail or nothing it was, then, and ‘nothing’ wasn’t an option. He took Steve's arm to start towing him toward the half-hearted sliver of path that twisted its way further into the vegetation. "Why don't we pretend there's a snow drift this way?"

Naturally, the giant, pathetic pain in the ass refused to budge. "Need to sanitize the area first," Steve said.

"Sanitize," Danny muttered. "Why do I think you're not talking about whipping out a spray bottle of Lysol and an anti-bacterial sponge?" Steve was staring at him uncomprehendingly but stubbornly. "Okay, fine," Danny said with a sigh. "I already did it, okay? All done. Everything's…uh, sanitary. We're good to go." That probably wasn't the way one of Steve's SEAL teammates would've put it, but it was the best Danny could do right now.

"Roger that," Steve answered after a long moment. "You've got point."

Like Danny was going to let Steve out of his sight. "No, see, I think we need to rethink that," Danny said firmly. "This trail? It looks like some kind of game trail, which calls for somebody with personal knowledge of the local fauna to go first, scope things out, warn me when we're about to get trampled by Tyrannosaurus rexes."

"Tyrannosaurus rexes, Danny?" The way Steve was slipping so quickly in and out of here and now was fucking scary. At least he was back with Danny for the moment. "On this path?" Steve had an eyebrow canted at the ribbon of muddy dirt, narrow enough that even chickens might have a hard time walking two abreast.

Danny conceded that generously. "Very small Tyrannosaurus rexes, Steven, baby Tyrannosaurus rexes who've run away from home and are being closely pursued by their pissed off and overprotective, very large Tyrannosaurus rex mothers. Which is another reason for you to go first. You're the guy with the gun."

Actually, he wasn't. Danny had confiscated that, after first removing all the ammunition and storing it separately in his pockets; Steve was dangerous enough armed when he _wasn't_ delirious.

Steve shot him a look. "I know you have my gun."

"If you're coherent enough to remember that, you're coherent enough to understand why."

Steve closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead again. "Yeah, I get it."

"So, walk," Danny said, giving him a gentle push toward the path.

They walked.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It probably wasn't really all that long before they stumbled across the shack, but Danny was willing to bet he'd be having weeks' worth of nightmares about that stretch of nearly invisible — and slippery as shit — trail, no matter how short the distance they'd actually covered had been. Just keeping Steve on his feet and moving forward was hellish enough, and the steady rain wasn't helping. The real hell, though — for both of them, Danny was pretty sure — was Steve's ongoing rollercoaster ride of Now I'm With You, Now We're Behind Enemy Lines.

It was… okay, it was terrifying, seeing Steve like that. 

And it was making Danny's heart hurt. Steve was all about control, even when he was pulling crazy-ass, clearly suicidal stunts, and watching him get lost inside the fever, inside his own head, seeing him so dazed and disoriented more often than not, was just _wrong._ It wasn't _Steve._ Steve should never look like that. 

Steve should never have to look like that.

Danny was trying to keep him upright and both of them moving forward along the trail when Steve dug in his heels and stopped even pretending to cooperate. "Wait," he said. "We should check that out."

"Check what out?" Was Steve having a lucid moment and talking about something real, or was he — "Oh," Danny said. The shack — clearly abandoned, by the way the jungle plants were trying to take it over — was tucked so closely underneath the trees that it was nearly invisible from this side. Once they got to the front, though, it was a lot easier to spot, with the dark gap of the missing door and the trampled-down area in front that was mostly still mud, even though grasses and vines were making inroads at the edges of the mud-patch.

Shelter. Danny realized he'd tightened his grip on Steve's arm and eased up a little. "Good call," he said. "We should absolutely check that out." It still seemed to have at least most of its roof, and wild horses — wild pigs — fucking T. rexes — would not be able to keep him from checking that shack out. Steve’s lips quirked, and Danny narrowed his eyes. "This is not setting any kind of precedent for me agreeing with you in the future, Steven, don't let it go to your head."

"Wouldn't dream of it, Danno," Steve answered.

Of course he would. Steve wouldn't be Steve if he wasn't smug every time the opportunity presented itself, and plenty of times when it didn't. 

He just needed to make it through this okay, so he _could_ be smug about this in the future; that was all Danny was asking.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Checking out the shack didn't take long. The walls were cobbled together mostly from sheets of corrugated metal and panels of that old-fashioned wavy greenish plastic Danny remembered being used for awnings when he was a kid. The doorway was just a missing panel, and the ‘door’ itself was inside, propped against the wall.

And yeah, it still had its roof.

And, for fuck's sake, some left-behind furniture, including an honest to shit _cot._

Out of the rain, a place for Steve to lie down that wasn't mud or wet grass? Danny would take it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

On the other hand…. "It's no Motel 6," Danny muttered.

Steve opened his mouth, an expression on his face that Danny was far too familiar with, and Danny shot him a warning glare. "Please don’t tell me any horror stories about worse places you've had to take shelter in. I’m not knocking the Ritz here, I would just prefer a lower ratio of mutant tropical bugs to people."

He'd dumped Steve's moronic "I'm fine, Danny" ass onto on the shack's lone chair earlier while he tackled the cot, brushing off more than one insect squatter from the underside. The mattress — one of those long, flat cushions from a patio lounge chair, covered in some kind of indoor-outdoor material that was supposed to be mildew-proof but apparently had given up the ghost on that some time ago — he'd taken outside and shaken. Thoroughly.

The insects and spiders hadn't stopped there; the shack was apparently serving as Party Central for half the bugs in the western hemisphere. Danny'd shooed as many of the disgusting creepy-crawlies outside as he could with the half-rotted broom he'd found in a corner. Half of them would probably crawl back inside during the middle of the night, but the temporary decline in insect population made him feel a little better.

Succeeding in bullying Steve into sitting on the cot, even if the idiot wouldn't lie down, had made Danny feel a little better, too. At least this way, when the stubborn jackass finally keeled over he had a good shot of landing prone on the mattress, where he belonged in the first place. And if he missed, the floor was only twelve inches away, and he probably wouldn't break anything vital when he face-planted.

Best of all, the shack's previous owner had left behind a surprising variety of thoughtful parting gifts. The bucket with the rusted-out bottom and the moldering pile of magazines too eaten by damp and insects to reveal whether he and Steve were sharing space with _Soldier of Fortune_ or _Playgirl_ weren't exactly prizes, but Danny was pretty pleased with the big lime-green plastic mixing bowl that was currently sitting out in the 'courtyard' collecting rainwater. He was pleased with the chair, too. It was clearly on its last legs and looked like it couldn't have managed 'comfortable' even in its long-ago prime, but it was a _chair_ and thus a mark of civilization. It was also a way to keep insects from crawling up Danny's ass all night.

But the real winner, aside from the miraculous cot, was the kerosene lantern that was currently sitting on top of a splintery packing crate and filling the shack with its flickering light. Why a freshly filled lantern with a new-looking wick had been left behind was beyond Danny, but they had _light._ And for bonus points, if anything resembling a helicopter or an airplane flew over tonight, Danny could take the lantern outside and wave it around as a signal.

If, of course, the fucking rain would ever fucking _stop._

"Signal mirror in one of my pockets, Danny," Steve said, like his fever had given him freakish mind-reading skills. "You can…" He trailed off and rubbed his forehead with his hands. "You can…"

"I can what?" Danny rolled his eyes. "In case you haven't noticed, it's nearly dark out there and raining like a bitch, and there are no planes flying overhead to notice any kind of signal. Not to mention that signaling would be more effective from an area with a lighter tree canopy — don't look at me like that, I'm not an idiot, you're not the only person here who understands certain basic concepts of survival."

Steve ran his hands down across face then let them drop to his lap. He looked sick and miserable and worn out. 

Danny closed his eyes tightly for a moment. Words. You coped with words, which was why Steve sucked at coping with things sometimes. He made himself keep talking. "And in case you're wondering why I'm not out there looking for a spot with a lighter tree canopy," he told Steve as firmly as he could manage at this particular moment, "I would have to be insane to leave you on your own right now. Even if you didn't get it into your fever-addled head that you're on an escape and evade mission somewhere classified and stumble out of our cozy little home away from home, forcing me to chase after you for the third time today — and I really do not want to do that, trust me — even if you stayed put by some miracle, I'd still come back to find you stockpiling insects for us to eat for dinner or doing something else equally lunatic."

Steve made a passable stab at his Patience In The Presence Of Stupidity face. "Dead insects spoil too fast to stockpile, Danno. Especially in the tropics."

Of _course_ Lieutenant Commander Survivalist SEAL would know something so deeply disgusting. Danny groaned. "This conversational topic is now closed, Steven. Permanently. I do not want to hear how you kept yourself alive for three weeks by eating freshly-caught mosquito larvae on some mission somewhere I'm not allowed to know the name of."

"Gotta make use of the environment," Steve said, his voice dropping off tiredly. "How you survive."

"I prefer to survive with the Doritos and the chocolate-peanut-butter granola bars I have in my backpack, if it's all the same to you." Steve didn't react to that, and Danny nudged Steve's leg. "It wouldn't actually hurt you to lie down, you know."

"Yeah," Steve said and didn't budge. He'd been staring at the floor for the past minute, but he looked up after another moment, straight at Danny. The corners of his mouth curved down like he'd just been sucking lemons. "Look, today, the waterfall… all this shit. I'm sorry, man."

Danny's throat suddenly felt thick. Steve apologizing — for _this_ — wasn’t actually something Danny was prepared for. Steve was a sneaky bastard. "You should be sorry," he said, after he'd cleared his throat. "I am never going hiking with you again when you're sick, just so you know."

A corner of Steve's mouth curled up; very, very slightly. "So you admit you'll come hiking with me again."

Danny graced him with a scowl. "No, no, you did not hear me say I would go hiking with you when you _weren't_ sick, either, did you? Because the next time you mention the word 'hike' to me I am scooping up Grace and taking the next flight back to Jersey."

"You keep telling yourself that." The fuck of the matter was that Steve was right. Sooner or later, he'd guilt Danny into going on yet another disaster-doomed hike; there wasn't really anything Danny could do about it.

Anything he even wanted to do about it, maybe.

The almost-not-there smile dropped from Steve's face. "This came out of the blue, Danny, I swear. I felt a little off this morning, but I just thought I was maybe starting to come down with a cold, nothing worse. I didn't know —"

"Yeah, yeah, I know you didn't know you were getting sick, you might be a giant pain in the ass, but I do know you wouldn't have dragged us up here if you knew you were about to turn into the poster boy for ravingly delusional hyperthermia." Danny pulled one of their remaining bottles of water from his daypack and tapped it against Steve's arm. "Here, drink some of this. You've got be getting dehydrated by now."

Steve accepted the bottle of water more from reflex than agreement, as far as Danny could tell. He sighed and tapped the bottle in Steve's hand. "Drink. You realize that if you've got some kind of super-flu, and if I come down with it because I am a decent human being and didn't abandon you to your delirious lost-in-the-jungle fate, you're going to owe me. Not that you don't already owe me for today, mere words aren't enough to convey how much you already owe me for today, but if I catch this crap from you, you're going to owe me so much _more._ "

"Already owe you. A lot, Danny. You think I don't know that?" There was a note in Steve's exhausted voice that made Danny think he wasn't just talking about today.

Danny swallowed past a completely unnecessary lump in his throat. "Okay, great, good, acknowledged; let's not get maudlin here. Drink your water before I pour it down your throat."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The left half of Danny's butt was numb and the right half felt like he was sitting on a cheese grater. They should take this chair back to civilization with them; it would come in handy as 'persuasion' in the interrogation room at HQ. But at least it was serving to keep Danny wide awake.

Along with worry.

Steve was sleeping again, if fitfully; his breathing too shallow and his head moving in tiny, aborted tremors. Fourteen hours of scarily high fever and stupid amounts of exertion while running said scarily high fever had left him looking gaunt and hollowed out. Bad.

Fuck, Steve looked bad. He looked like he'd looked the first week after they'd gotten him back home last fall, minus the visible marks left over from having been Wo Fat's torture toy.

Danny closed his eyes. It didn't help; those memories were too vivid. Especially the nights, Steve lying there trying to sleep, looking like death warmed over in the moonlight coming in through the windows. Pretending every time he woke up in a cold sweat from a half-doze, with his hands shaking and his eyes haunted, that he was fine. _"Fine, Danny. I'm fine, okay? Go back to bed."_

Danny never had. He'd kept his ass planted in the chair in the corner of Steve's bedroom and groused, _"I'm trying to sleep here, Steven, do you mind?"_ and refused to budge. 

And he'd worried. Steve wasn't telling them _shit._ It wasn't hard to guess some of it, maybe a lot of it — electrical burns, rope-marks around his neck, the state of his feet, his shoulders, his ribs, his kidneys, his _voice_ — but that didn't make Steve keeping it all bottled up inside any better.

_"I'm dealing with it, Danny."_

Right. Dealing with it the way he dealt with too many things. Carrying it alone. 

The cot creaked slightly. Danny opened his eyes. Steve was still out of it, moving restlessly in his sleep. Danny leaned forward to lay the back of his hand against Steve's forehead. No surprise there, still way too fucking hot. Maybe this time Steve would leave the bandana alone if Danny tried the wet-cloth-on-forehead thing again — not that it could help much, the rainwater Danny'd collected in the green plastic bowl wasn't particularly cool, but it was better than doing nothing.

He'd left the bowl next to the lantern on the crate across the room, where it was out of Steve's path if he decided, like he had twice so far tonight, that he needed to be somewhere besides lying the fuck down. The second time, he'd shoved Danny to the floor and dropped heavily on top of him, sheltering him from what was clearly a nightmare barrage of enemy fire. He'd gotten an elbow into Danny's ribs in the process, and while Danny was still wheezing from that, Steve — Steve's fever, flashback, whatever — had decided he was bleeding out, not just nursing a new, elbow-shaped bruise.

Danny really hoped they wouldn't have a repeat of that particular episode, and not just for the sake of his ribs. Steve had been so… so filled with grief, beneath his controlled calm. Danny had already seen enough of that expression on Steve's face to last a lifetime. 

With a grimace, Danny stood up to wet the bandana down again — and okay, so it wasn't just his butt-cheek that was numb, his entire leg was numb, too. He crashed back into the frame of the chair, and the chair tipped backwards and hit the wall behind it, making the poorly fastened metal panels clang from the impact.

Steve's eyes flew open. He flinched as Danny righted the chair, the metal panels protesting again with another sharp clang as the chair back scraped against them. Steve's eyes were wide and staring, but he was gone, looking at something Danny was pretty sure wasn't here and now, looking at that something with an expression that wrapped a coil of ice around Danny's heart. 

He knew that expression, too. 

"I will kill you," Steve ground out, his voice like broken glass, like death and dying, wrapping even more ice around Danny's heart. "You're a dead man."

"Steve, hey," Danny said. He knew his voice was faltering, couldn't give a fuck. "C'mon, no. You're in Hawaii, with me, Danny, okay? Everything's okay here. Except you being sick as a dog, but it'll be okay. Trust me, all right?"

"You're a dead man."

"Wild guess, you're thinking I'm Wo Fat right now, aren't you?" Danny said, keeping a wary eye on Steve. "Which I'm not, by the way. If you're wondering how I know what you were thinking? Well, see, we're having a rerun here of the first few nights after we got you back from North Korea. Apparently if you missed the first showing, you can catch it in syndication later."

Steve made a wordless sound that Danny absolutely never wanted to hear again, a sound of fury and implacable threat and _pain._

Goddammit. "Come on, Steve," he said, "don't do this. Stay with me here."

He could hear Steve's swallow. Steve screwed his eyes shut, clamped his lips together in a thin line, and fucking _fought,_ Danny could see it. "Hey," he said, and kept saying, helplessly. "Hey. Steve, it's okay."

It wasn't. It really fucking wasn't. But at least when Steve opened his eyes again a couple of minutes later, he didn't have North Korea in them, didn't have Wo Fat. Didn't have Jenna — not that Steve had ever said more than, "She gave me a chance to get out," and "Wo Fat killed her."

"Danny?" Steve's voice still sounded like broken glass, and Danny grabbed their last remaining bottle of water.

"Yeah, I'm here," he said, "I'm here. You need to drink this, okay?" and tried very hard to ignore the way he had to keep Steve's hands steady on the plastic bottle as Steve drank two measly swallows.

Then he tried very hard to ignore the way his own hands were shaking as he wrung out the bandana in the rainwater and spread it across Steve's forehead.

Steve's eyes were closed again by then and he was clearly just about out again, but he murmured, "Danny," like it was some kind of magic charm — some kind of magic anti-Wo-Fat charm — as Danny smoothed the cloth down.

So maybe his hand lingered a little on Steve's forehead. It didn't matter. Steve was too far gone to object.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Danny watched as the smoke from his trash-and-damp-wood fire wound its way up through the thin interlacing of tree branches overhead and still remained visible as _smoke_ against the brightening blue of the sky. Even above the treetops the breeze didn't seem to be dispersing the smoke too quickly, thank fuck.

Now he needed to figure out how long he should give the signal time to work before he had to try something else. Not that he knew what else to try. The barely there path they'd followed yesterday to get here dead-ended at the shack, and they were still lost.

And Steve — Steve's fever was up even higher, and he'd been so out of it this morning that Danny hadn't been able to get him to drink even a single swallow of water for hours. That was almost as worrying as the fever right now, since he hadn't pissed since way too fucking long ago yesterday, and that spelled dehydration, and Jesus fuck they needed civilization today, this morning, _now._

At least it wasn't raining — yet — so his signal fire had a chance to work. He headed back across the tiny muddy 'courtyard' towards the shack. Staying put and signaling had to be the smart thing to do, but he could keep one eye on the fire and his other eye on Steve while trying to figure out how to turn the cot into some kind of litter, in case he ended up having to try to drag the stupid jackass out of here himself. Somehow. 

Not that he could see how he could make that work. God alone knew where they were and how to get back to civilization. And the jungle here was too dense; trying to drag a litter through it, even just backtracking along the narrow trail they'd followed to get here in the first place, would be a bitch. Danny's aching muscles wanted to seize up at the mere thought of it. He was running on fumes — well, running on zero sleep, a handful of nacho-flavored Doritos, a couple of granola bars, and enough worry to fell an elephant — and it wouldn't be easy.

Of course, nothing with McGarrett was ever, _ever_ easy.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Except when it — miraculously — was.

He'd only been back inside for half an hour or so — and freaking out a little, maybe, because Steve had started to shiver hard enough to rattle the frame of the cot, and still wouldn't wake the fuck _up_ — when he heard a growing thrum in the air that rapidly turned into the blessed sound of chopper blades. He was outside beside the signal fire, with Steve's signal mirror in hand, faster than he'd maybe ever moved before. The chopper hovered right above him for a minute with the wind from the blades whipping the tree branches aside, and the pilot clearly understood Danny's arm-waved "Fucking _help"_ message before he headed off.

Danny's knees felt a little weak. Thank fuck.

Thank _fuck._

Which was pretty much what he was still saying, out loud, not that Steve was with it enough to pay any attention to him saying it, when a voice carried in from outside. "You need help, brah?" 

"We need so much help," Danny agreed.

He looked at Steve again before he headed outside to meet their rescuer and get whatever the plan was going to be in gear. Steve looked like a shell of himself, hollowed out and empty and _gone,_ and Danny felt his heart squeeze in his chest. "Hang on, babe," he muttered. "I'm getting you a ride home now, so you just hang on."

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

It wasn't exactly the med-evac of Danny's dreams, but Danny's new best buddy Jack had found a clear, almost-level spot to perch his small bird only a few minutes' walk away, and between the two of them they were getting Steve out of there.

No more waiting. Danny was done with waiting. He'd done enough waiting — waiting and worrying — during the past twenty hours to turn his hair white.

And Steve was back with him again, groggy but awake and trying, stumbling along the not-path through the jungle with Danny propping him up under one shoulder while Jack propped him up under the other.

It was a little bit too much like the last time Danny had been part of a three-person stumble towards rescue. But at least this time they weren't illegally in a hostile country. This time they didn't have to worry about evading pissed-off guys with very big guns and trigger-happy fingers. 

This time they weren't fresh from untying Steve from the back of one of Wo Fat's transport trucks, and on their way to board an RPG-equipped flying chicken coop piloted by a crazy person who still owned an eight-track.

This time, Steve was just sick. Not goddamn _tortured._

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Jack hadn't underestimated too badly; they got to the clearing and got Steve into one of the chopper's back seats before Steve gave out on them entirely.

Danny climbed into the seat next to him and just sat for a moment, breathing. Thank fuck. Thank _fuck._ They'd made it.

The helicopter engine started up with a whine and Steve lifted his head abruptly, twisting it around. "Joe?" he said. "Gutches? Chin — Danny, _where’s Chin?"_

Shit. Danny wasn't the only one having a moment here.

"Easy," he said, putting his hand on Steve's shoulder where Joe had kept hold of him, kept him upright, kept him grounded, all those months ago. "Take it easy. This isn't Tangerine, Steve, okay? We're in Hawaii, and this nice helicopter person here is rescuing us from our relaxing little hike. Everything's fine, okay?"

"Where's Wo Fat?" The darkness in Steve's voice cut through the increasing noise of the helicopter like a knife.

Danny closed his eyes. "He's not here," he said.

He wasn't sure it was the truth, though. He was beginning to think Wo Fat would always be right there with them. No matter where the son of a bitch actually was.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The door to Steve's room was open and Danny paused in the hallway for a moment before walking in. Steve looked better. Not just cleaned-up-by-nurses better, but feeling-better better. He was still hooked up to an IV and still looked like crap, but he no longer looked like half-dead crap. Quarter-dead, maybe.

And he was awake. And looked, as far as Danny could tell from here, lucid.

"You just going to stand out in the hallway? Dengue fever isn't contagious." 

Yeah, lucid. 

Danny shook his head and walked all the way into the room. "Dengue fever. People do not get weird things like dengue fever in civilized parts of the world, McGarrett."

"Civilization has nothing to do with latitude," Steve said. "I thought we discussed latitude already, anyway." 

"Yes, we did, I remember that discussion. Civilization has everything to do with latitude." Danny cleared his throat. "So. How're you feeling?" Not that Steve was likely to actually tell him.

"Fine, Danny."

Of course. Danny didn't even try to keep himself from grimacing at that.

Steve closed his eyes for a moment. "Better," he said, backtracking a little.

He clearly _was_ feeling better. But from what the doctor had told Danny, Steve was probably only feeling better because they'd gotten his fever down to something less likely to flash-fry his brain and were getting fluids back into him and some painkillers. Dengue fever sounded like a bitch to go through.

But Steve was going to be okay. There'd been too many times on their hike from hell that Danny had been worried — more than worried — that Steve wasn't going to be okay at all.

"They figure I picked this up when I was on Kauai last week. Apparently —"

"Yeah, your doctor told me that. A small outbreak, infected mosquitoes, hardly ever happens here," Danny said, "which I sincerely hope is true." He drew in a deep breath. "The funny thing is that when I was checking you in, the nurse asked me if you'd been out of the country during the past year, and all I could think of was that you'd picked up some kind of weird shit last fall that had just been biding its time, waiting to blindside you."

Steve stared at Danny with the kind of intensely focused stare a sick person in a hospital bed shouldn't be able to pull off. "Danny —"

"You know — North Korea, the gift that keeps on giving."

"Do you have a point here?"

"Actually, I do." Danny took in another deep breath. "I just spent the better part of another weekend with you scaring ten years off my life, so yeah, I have a point."

Steve moved his head in a tiny, aborted headshake; denying what exactly, Danny wasn't sure, since this was Steve, but he could make a few solid guesses. "Danny, come on. I'm fine. I'll be fine."

"Yeah, you will be. This time. Last time you almost weren't."

"What are you…" Steve said. A muscle at his jaw line jumped. "Okay, no. If you're talking about what I think you're talking about, it's over and we don't need to talk about it."

Even the awesome, if often sorely tested, Williams' self-control wasn't quite strong enough to let that pass. "You know what? It's not over, and we really do. But right now I'll settle for you promising you won't pull another North Korea on me. On us." Danny stuck his hands in his pockets and hit Steve with a pretty focused stare of his own. 

"I had to go," Steve said, his jaw now clenched so tight Danny was surprised he managed to get the words out. "You know I had to go. I tried going through channels first, calling in favors. Going myself was the only thing left to do."

"Because you had to help Jenna, yeah, I know. You would do the same for any friend. I get that. Just… take a break from the Lone Ranger shtick, all right? I'm getting tired of hauling your ass back to safety and civilization."

"I can't promise it won't happen again, Danny. You know I can't."

Danny sighed. "Yeah, but I need you to try harder, Steve. I hate to admit it, but I've gotten used to having you around. And Grace likes you. Why, I don't know, but she does."

The tension Steve had been radiating disappeared like it had never existed. "You know you both love me," he said with a smirk.

"Your fever must still be too high, maybe I should call a nurse," Danny said with a grimace. Steve's smirking grin got wider. 

And, it might as well be said, fonder. Not that Danny was going to call him on that. 

Still, he was never going hiking with Steve again.

"We didn't make it to the waterfall," Steve said. "You really should see it, Danny. It's beautiful. We should —"

"No. No, we are _not_ — I am never —"

"Sure, you will, Danno."

Danny sighed again. Sure, he would. It was like a curse. "Next time _I'm_ carrying the sat phone."

Steve… Steve just looked smug. Of course he did, the bastard. Then his expression softened, and he said, "Thanks. For hauling my ass back to civilization. And, you know…"

Danny did know. 

"You're welcome," he said.

_fin_


End file.
